


And See Us Both Somehow

by welltimedsmiles



Category: Marvel
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-29
Updated: 2006-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-23 20:37:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/welltimedsmiles/pseuds/welltimedsmiles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"How’d we end up like… like everyone else?” [1,200 words]</p>
            </blockquote>





	And See Us Both Somehow

  
Sometimes it’s hard for her to believe they’re not still college freshmen eating cheap pizza and drinking flat soda and waiting to see what party Mary Jane would lead them all to next.

But then other times she wonders how they got this old, like right now when she notices the grey streaks starting to take up more and more space in Peter’s hair, or the way it (still) takes them a glass of wine to warm up from chilled formality to people that used to maybe once upon a time be in love.

“And George?” he asks her. His voice is sharp, and she bites her tongue to keep from snapping that she’s not one of his students who forgot her homework. She knows all too well how that argument will go. Gwen and Peter round infinity plus ten.

“He’s your son, act like you at least can talk to him instead of… whatever macho stand-off the two of you seem to be involved in now.” She doesn’t mean to cut him like this; it was never his fault that the minute things of the universe collided against them. And yet, somehow, she always wonders how it’s those little things that undid the two of them.

Peter just sighs and takes a sip of water, staring at her new placemats as if they’ll provide twenty years of answers “He’s fine; or at least that’s what I gathered when I talked to May yesterday.”

They descend back into small talk as he cooks lasagna in her kitchen and she sits cross-legged on the counter. The spring air and Manhattan noise fly through yellow curtains behind her. Sometimes the breeze becomes something a bit stronger and the fabric of the curtain tickles the back of her arm and sends slight shivers down her back. He tells her stories about his students and about the general decline in the quality of super villains in the past few years.

“That’s kind of good, though. I mean, how long can you keep doing this?” the words spill out and she doesn’t mean them to. That’s a question she never wanted to ask, even though it always sat in her throat, almost choking her at times. It would be too easy to blame the mess their relationship became on Spider-Man. It’d make Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker far less responsible and far more flawless.

She knows his answer as soon as the words come out of her mouth.

“As long as I can.” His hand is cool against her thigh. She doesn’t remember him getting this close to her, but she’s okay with it.

Every time she’s with Peter, there’s a moment that reminds her why she used to love him.

Her head still rests easily against his. She breathes in deeply and God, he will always be gym socks and drug store aftershave. His lips brush against hers; she can feel him starting to lean and she wraps her legs around him and is ready to throw herself off the counter and into him. He stops suddenly.

“Tony?” His voice is soft and muted; his face buried in her hair. She just shakes her head.

“Felecia?” She presses her face a little more against his chest, the cotton of his worn t-shirt soft and comfortable.

“Not in… no,” he answers her as his teeth pull on her bottom lip, cautiously pressing his mouth against hers. It manages to be desperate and sweet.

They crash into the pictures and bookcases as they tumble toward the bedroom. At forty, Gwen long ago lost the notion that screwing against tile floor next to the garbage disposal was daring and romantic.

She tries to pull the sheets back as they land on the bed, but they’re too fast, too needy to bother. He pulls her shirt off and kisses her stomach as she kicks her shorts onto the floor. When she looks up at him, her hands pushing his t-shirt off as he smiles at her, she gasps at the several small scars across his stomach. She stops him from running his hand up the rough scarred flesh of her thigh in return.

“You forgot?” She pulls his hand away and bites her lip. Shadows fall across his face.

“Never,” he answers before pulling her up into a kiss.

She knew the answer to that, too. He probably thinks entirely _too much_ about the bridge and how her arm cracked in his. She still sometimes hears him screaming her name in horrors when he sees her shattered leg, skin stripped away by brick, wire, and velocity.

Theirs are the somewhat awkward motions and laughs of people rediscovering each other. It’s one thing when it’s someone new; it’s another to re-plot a map that she once thought she knew so well. She remembers the red, embarrassed smile he had the first time she helped him undo her pink lace bra.

There is no dramatic screaming, no declarations of love made to be quickly forgotten. Instead she moans softly as he drags his teeth across her skin, kissing down her breasts and stomach, and as she moves to push him away from her thigh, he blocks her hand gently and slides his fingers between her legs. She relaxes and he kisses her _there_ , scarred rough skin, and she doesn’t moan, or buck her hips or do anything other than sigh, her breath releasing as he looks up at her.

“Oh… Gwen.”

Afterward, they stay sprawled out on their backs staring at the ceiling. When his fingers brush lightly against her arm and he pulls quickly back, she jumps just a bit.

“I missed you,” he says finally, letting his hand wrap around hers. They’re both still focused on the white and gold trimmed ceiling fan above them.

“It only took you twenty years.” And that’s not fair, as if she was aggrieved and left behind. As if she wasn’t an equal partner in their marriage’s implosion.

“Gwen…”

“Yeah, I know.” The sheets they finally found their way to crinkle as he turns over; his hand reaches to stroke her face. “How’d we end up like…” and she thinks about her friends on their third divorce and friends who don’t speak to their children, of what she sees on daytime TV and when she’s standing in the checkout at the market. “…Like everyone else?”

She’s a little surprised, maybe a little disappointed, that this has always been her greatest confusion. That they fell prey to all the little things. That brilliant as they are; that as heroic as he is, and as much as she loved him, they are left with the same debris as every other forty-something.

“Cause we _are_ everybody else.” He kisses her and rests his head on her shoulder.

It gets darker and they forget the now burnt lasagna and wilting lettuce and order take-out and sit on her fire escape. Maybe she’s not too old to think New York at night with a good guy and Indian take-out is, not romantic, but really _nice_.

He gives her a kiss to the forehead as she walks him down to the street.

“Next month?” he asks.

“Yeah.” Easily fading back into themselves and schedules and traditions set when May was five years old and continued long after either child cared if mommy and daddy talked or not.

That morning she wakes up and on her window sill are bright yellow flowers, with what looks like a little bit of that web stuff tying them together.

“I missed you too, Peter.”

[the end]

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All belong to Marvel Comics, Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and so on.


End file.
